The NYTimes Gift to the McCain Campaign

I predict: The net effect of the Iseman story is that McCain's popularity will rise.

Also, if Obama is smart, he will denounce the story as irrelevant to the campaign and criticize the Times for repeating the allegation that McCain had an affair without confirming it.

Update: Will Bunch at Attytood:

Simply put, as it's playing out right now, the story was -- probably unintentionally, although who knows -- timed perfectly to help out McCain. Its insinuations of an improper relationship between the powerful senator and Vicki Iseman came too late to hurt McCain with the "values voters" in the GOP primaries, but at exactly the right time to rally right-wing talk radio against the Times, and thus for a candidate they can now support in November while holding their collective nose.

Comments

[thereisnorule6]

this has all the earmarks of a Karl Rove trademark ratfuck. First Dan Rather, now the NYT.

[Mithras]

Can't agree. It's a case of one news outfit rushing to beat another to print a "scandal" that backfires and benefits the intended target.

[borehole]

I can't figure out if this is a botched attempt to take down a Republican or a successful attempt to make it look like a botched attempt to take down a Republican.

Thanks, NYT. I spend the better part of a decade telling conservatives they're paranoid twits for thinking you're out to get them, and then you break an 8-year-old story about McCain three minutes after Michelle Obama gets caught burning a flag (that is what happened, right?).